The last game of Manchester City’s pre-season tour of the United States was against Chelsea at the impressive Ohio Stadium in Columbus.
You can never make Pep Guardiola happy.
Everything worked out in this game. A weak Manchester City team kept beating up a nearly full-strength Chelsea team, who they play on the first day of the Premier League season. Erling Haaland scored a brilliant hat-trick after it looked like he might be hurt, and Oscar Bobb kept up his great play.
At the end of the game, City had gained confidence after their first win of the tour. Young players had stepped up and played well. But if you look at Guardiola, you might think he’s a boss trying to score a last-second winner. It’s not clear what will happen with him yet, but he says he’s excited about the new season and would love to stay. Based on what happened on Saturday, he can’t wait to start in two weeks, but Chelsea won’t be.
The clock had just gone past five minutes when Haaland celebrated at Ohio Stadium. He was a popular goal maker in front of the mostly City crowd. City’s young and inexperienced tour team had been given a goal by £115m The Norwegian had a one-on-one finish that he was never going to miss after Moises Caicedo joined Chelsea.
Haaland scored his second goal of the game in less than 300 seconds. That was the most amazing thing about the goal, not how it was scored or Caicedo’s mistake. After Chelsea made another mistake, Jack Grealish stepped in and picked off Haaland in the box. He scored the penalty on his second try after the excited judge ordered a new attempt after Haaland’s first one.
It had been five minutes, and Haaland had already celebrated three times. City must have wished they could play Chelsea every week, but they will only get to play them once every two weeks because their first Premier League game is in two weeks at Stamford Bridge.
It’s hard to say where both teams stand after this game because City’s team was much weaker than the one they’ll play in the league, and Chelsea’s looked strong, but they have players coming back. Did they hide anything with their strategies either?
It seems likely that they won’t be so kind at the league meeting. Haaland’s hat-trick goal was also caused by a mistake by Chelsea. McAtee finished off some great play in the middle of the field with his second assist in as many minutes. Some City fans behind the goal let out a Poznan after Oscar Bobb scored another beautiful goal to add to his summer highlights reel.
But Guardiola is never happy. When the score was 2-0 and the game had stopped, he called his whole team over for an unplanned practice. He seemed to be paying attention to his goalie and defenders while giving orders to Stefan Ortega. Then he turned his attention to his forwards, and Haaland was given some advice.
The boss said that he couldn’t teach his players any new formations before the new season because most of the people who need to know them aren’t on the team. He clearly had something to say, because when the same thing happened again in the second half, he stood in the middle of a group of players and told them what they could do better.
That’s not like Enzo Maresca and Chelsea, whose players were randomly moving around the field while Maresca gave a few of them short orders. Guardiola’s team was in charge, but he kept making requests as if City were behind.
Guardiola was moving players around to get his point across when he made changes with 10 minutes left. He really means it when he says he’s excited about the season. Haaland is the same way. Chelsea will be scared about the first game when they leave Ohio. City moves away from the United States with a breeze.
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